What is the Best Length for a Webinar?

How does a webinar work?

When you create and host a webinar, you are looking to boost your brand reach and reputation by providing people with unique insights on a given topic. By interacting with customers personally while addressing their questions and concerns, you are able to cast your brand as an authority in the space and build relationships with those who attend. A webinar is more than just webinar length, it's the entire presentation.

How do you conduct a webinar effectively?

Before you begin your actual webinar, you'll want to be sure you have everything in place to make it successful. Do your research, know your topic and know it well, know your audience, choose a webinar length that works for your topic and audience, and practice before you get going. In order to be seen as the expert during your presentation, you'll need to be fully prepared and that means a mock webinar presentation.

As you begin planning, your webinar length won't be the only thing you need to worry about. Your webinar should have at least three main parts.

• Introductions
• Core presentation
• Questions and answers

1. Introductions. You will need to introduce your presenters and explain their expertise and connection to the webinar topic.
2. Core presentation. This is the longest part of the webinar and should frame your opinions and data as a story. Structure your presentation as an engaging tale that helps listeners understand how you arrived at your opinions and how they are impacted by the information you are sharing. Most importantly, you need to show your audience how your insights will help them.
3. Question and answer session. It is important to leave time for questions at the end to boost engagement and help you learn more about the interests of your prospects. The questions will help you focus on areas where concerns or uncertainty exists but that you might have missed. They will also help build a greater sense of connection between you and your prospects.

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What is the optimal webinar length?

The exact webinar length will depend upon your topic. The majority of webinars are around 60 minutes. This will generally provide you with ample time for the three sections of the session:

• 5-7 minutes for welcomes and introductions
• 38-45 minutes for the actual presentation
• 10-15 minutes for questions at the end

Occasionally, brands that have very high customer engagement rates or that are covering a particularly lengthy topic may go closer to 90 minutes of webinar length. This hour and a half mark should be the maximum as longer webinars run the risk of seeing audience drop-off.

While you want to inform your audience with plenty of industry knowledge that's trending, you want to avoid boring them. If your webinar goes over the suggested time, your audience will not only drop off but they also may not return in the future. Creating a webinar can not only help you engage your audience on a more personal level, but it will also answer their questions and offer you the opportunity to be seen as an expert and a thought leader in your field.